Warship Wednesday: Jan. 20, 2016 The Slow boat up the Paraguay River
ARP Paraguay 2005
Here we see the Humaitá-class gunboat (cañonera) ARP Paraguay (C1) of La Armada Paraguya (go figure) as she sits in 2005. Though she may look humble, she and her sister were a force to reckon with in their day.
With tensions mounting with neighbor Bolivia over the Chaco region in the early late 1920s, landlocked Paraguay has access to the Atlantic through the river system and has had an organized armada to patrol that system (and poke its head out into the ocean from time to time) since about 1900.
However, the fleet of small river coasters just was not going to cut it with a looming war. You see the rugged Chaco was thought at the time to be a rich source of petroleum and with Royal Dutch Shell backing Paraguay and Standard Oil supporting Bolivia; it was only a matter of time before one of the world’s first and worst petro wars, La Guerra de la Sed (Spanish for “The War of the Thirst”) kicked off. While full fledged war did not erupt until 1932, a number of border incidents in 1927 and increasing troop movements into the area were a clear escalation that could really only lead to the balloon going up.
With that in mind, Paraguay, allied with Argentina, ordered a pair of 850-ton, 229-foot gunboats from Odero-Terni-Orlando, in Italy in 1928 at a cost of £300,000 total after shopping around in other yards throughout Europe. These craft were designed by local Paraguayan dockyard manager Capt. José Bozzano.
Bozzano, a man of many talents, would later use his Armada dockyard crew to make over 30,000 locally produced Paraguayan grenades plus 25,000 mortar grenades (and the mortars to fire them), 7,500 aerial bombs and some 2,000 vehicles during the Chaco War. Talk about buy local.
Paraguayan gunboat Humaitá without her main armament, shortly after being launched
Anyway, the two gunboats, ARP Humaitá (C2) and ARP Paraguay (C1), arrived in Paraguay on May 5, 1931 with mostly Italian crews and they were pretty neat. Though about the size of a frigate or sloop of the time, they could float in just 5.5 feet of freshwater. Further, they were pretty much the most heavily armed river boats of all time.
Main 4.7-inch twin guns of the Paraguayan gunboat Humaitá before being mounted. Pretty damn big for a river gunboat
Protected from small arms fire and shrapnel by a half-inch steel belt (3/4 inch on the conning tower), they carried an impressive battery of no less than seven 76mm (three Ansaldo 76 mm AAA cannons) and 120mm guns (two twin Ansaldo 4.7 in guns) as well as machine guns and a half-dozen large naval mines to cripple Bolivian shipping should it exist (it did not other than a few small ~100 foot long craft).
Cañonera Paraguay shuttling troops up river. Its all assholes to elbows
Each gunboat could cart a full regiment of infantry up river and drop them off to go do the Lord’s work in slaughtering Bolivians looking for oil.
Since then, these two gunboats have been involved in a couple of coups, the Paraguayan Civil War (Paraguay and Humaita, were both seized by the rebels in Buenos Aires while they were undergoing repairs), carried Juan Domingo Perón of Argentina into exile, gave surface commands to retired Kriegsmarine officers in the 1960s and, largely due to the fact that they have spent almost their whole lives in freshwater, are still around in some sort of service today.
Ah Peron being shipped away on ARP Paraguay. Don’t cry for me…
Humaitá has been a museum ship since 1992, though she still serves as a stationary training ship from time to time while Paraguay is used as a receiving and depot vessel while officially listed as the Paraguayan Navy’s flagship. Surely this is the only case of an entire class of surface combatants to have remained in some sort of continuous service for 85 years…
The vintage Paraguayan gunboat HUMAITÁ seen here at the Sajonia Naval Station, Asunción, Paraguay. via shipspotting
ARP Humaitá (C2) as museum ship
The 4.7s are still functional though shells for them haven’t been made since 1943
ARP Paraguay (C1), 2005, note the WWII era 76mm gun over the pre-WWII 4.7 twin mount
For more on this ship, visit here, here and here, all excellent Spanish sources.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Sorry about the late posting this week, in the effort to get to SHOT Show in Vegas this weekend and with the winter weather making horse care more pressing, its been busy this week!
Warship Wednesday (on a Friday): The Tennessee peace cruiser
Image by Robert M. Cieri via Navsource
Here we see the Denver-class protected cruiser USS Chattanooga (C-16/PG-30/CL-18), port bow view, while in New York harbor, 1905. You can tell by her fine lines and ornamental brightworks, she was meant more to impress colonial locals and less to sink enemy ships.
Though she never fired a shot in anger, the hardy little Chattanooga was around for a quarter century and saw immense changes to the fleet she was a part of, changes that eventually left her out of step, though her relics are now a part of the more asymmetric war on terror.
In 1899, Pax Americana found herself suddenly a colonial power after picking up the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and a host of other scattered territories as part of spoils in the Spanish-American War. Further, President McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution which annexed Hawaii in 1898 while the Tripartite Convention of 1899 split up the Samoan islands between the U.S., Germany and Britain– though neither the native Hawaiians nor the Samoans were really happy about either.
With all of these far-flung possessions added to the 45-state Union, the Navy needed some warships to go wave the flag there without depleting the main battle fleet as outlined by the good Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan. These ships need not slug it out in naval combat with a determined foe, they only needed long legs; a few guns to impress the locals while being capable of sending potential pirates, rabble-rousers and armed merchant cruisers to the bottom; and a high mast to show a flag.
This led to the six-pack of Denver-class vessels, peace cruisers if you will.
USS Des Moines (C-15, CL-17, PG 29), a good postcard reference to the Denver class. Note the schooner rig and fine lines.
The Denvers didn’t have much armor (about the thickness of a good butter knife in most places), nor did they have large guns (10 5″/50 Mark 5 single mounts, able to penetrate just 1.4-inches of armor at 9,000 yards though their 50-pound shells were capable of a 19,000 yard range overall which made them perfect for shelling uprisings on shore or warning off undesirable foreign ships creeping around colonial ports), nor were they particularly fast (they were designed but not fitted with an auxiliary Schooner sail rig).
One of ‘Nooga’s 5″ deck guns, probably port side forward. From the collection of H.G. Froehlich, CPO, USN provided by Herman B. Froelich, via Navsource
However, they were 308-feet of American soil that could self-deploy and remain on station with little support when needed while still being able to float in 15 feet of seawater.
In short, they were the littoral combat ships of 1899.
The six ships, in what seems to be shipyard welfare from Uncle Sam, were built in six different yards near-simultaneously, all commissioning within about 18 months of each other.
The hero of our story, USS Chattanooga, was laid down at Crescent Shipyard, Elizabethport, New Jersey, a new shipyard whose historical claim to fame was in building the USS Holland (SS-1), the nation’s first official modern submarine and a number of the follow-on A-class pigboats. She was named for the city in Tennessee and was the second Chattanooga on the Navy List, the first being a Civil War steam sloop that was holed and sunk at her dock by floating ice in 1871.
Commissioned 11 October 1904 during the tensions of the Russo-Japanese War, Chattanooga headed for Europe where she joined the squadron there and helped escort the body of Scottish-American Capt. John Paul Jones, late of the Continental Navy, from an unmarked grave in a Parisian cemetery to a magnificent bronze and marble sarcophagus at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis.
Starboard side view, anchored, 12 OCT 1906. Photo 0-G-1035139 from The National Archives.
Port side view at anchor in Genoa, Italy in the early 1900’s. Giorgio Parodi via Navsource
For the next seven years she cruised the Pacific (via the Suez), the Med, the Caribbean and helped train Naval Militia before entering into layup in 1912.
An early 63-foot A-class submarine, likely USS Grampus (SS-4) or Pike (SS-6) on the Willapa River, at Raymond, Washington, circa 1912. The stern of the USS Chattanooga can be seen in front of the sub. Photo provided by Steve Hubbard of the Pacific County Historical Society, Washington State via Pigboats
When 1914 came about, a new crew manned the rails and brought her back to life for the tensions in Mexico, sailing off the Pacific coast of that country, protecting American interests, chiefly from the port of La Paz through early 1917.
Starboard side view while in San Diego, 1915. Caption on the back of the photo reads: “This photo was taken after were secured from coaling ship and were cleaning her up.” Via Navsource
Nooga’s shipboard naval landing party drills with M1909 Benet Mercie light machine guns. During the Mexican crisis, her landing team and those of the other Pacific fleet ships sent to babysit ports in Mexico drilled non-stop, though did not wind up going expeditionary. A ship Chattanooga’s size could muster 80-100 men for action ashore, a common tactic in those days. Photo via Navsource from the collection of H.G. Froehlich, CPO, USN.
In April 1917 with the U.S. entry into the ongoing Great War with Germany, Chattanooga chopped to the Atlantic Fleet and cruised the Caribbean for enemy shipping for a while before joining in convoy duties across the big pond. While vital, her brief wartime service was unexciting.
Following the end of the conflict, she remained a fixture in European ports with a concentration on the Black Sea, where the former Russian Empire was tearing itself apart in a civil war, and around Greece and Turkey, who were warming up a conflict of their own.
USS CHATTANOOGA (C-16) in a European port circa 1919. Courtesy of Paul H. Silverstone, 1983. Catalog #: NH 94980, via Naval History and Heritage Command. She was reclassified as a gunboat, PG-30, 17 July 1920. Her place in the fleet was taken by much more powerful modern cruisers. Note her darker and more smudgy haze gray scheme and simplified rigging. Also note the huge ensign on her mast. That’s what she did.
Chattanooga most importantly helped supervise the liquidation of the former Austro-Hungarian Navy (kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine) in the Adriatic.
She provided support to the Naval Reservist prize crew on the 15,000-ton Radetzky-class pre-dreadnought battleship USS (ex-SMS) Zrinyi at Spalato (Split) in Dalmatia. On the morning of 7 November 1920, Zrínyi was decommissioned and Chattanooga took her in tow across the sea to Italy where, under the terms of the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain, Zrínyi was turned over to the Italian government at Venice.
Bluejackets on the American/Austro-Hungarian Radetzky-class pre-dreadnought battleship USS (ex-SMS) Zrinyi, View of the ship’s bow, looking forward from the bridge. This photograph was taken at Spalato, Yugoslavia, while the ship was in US Navy custody pending conclusion of peace treaties. The ship was commissioned in the US Navy from 22 November 1919 to 7 November 1920, when it was handed over to Italy. The ship never got underway while in US hands except for the delivery voyage under tow by Chattanooga in November 1920. Photo Catalog #: NH 43536, Naval History and Heritage Command
Ordered back to the U.S., Chattanooga was decommissioned at Boston on 19 July 1921 and, though reclassified as a light cruiser, CL-18, the next month, never saw active duty again.
She was stricken in 1929 and sold for her value in scrap the following year. As for her five sisters, one, USS Tacoma was lost January 16, 1924 after she ran aground, while the other four vessels were all laid up like Chattanooga and subsequently scrapped.
While a frigate and later a cruiser were both laid down during WWII with intention of continuing her name, they were not commissioned as such and the Naval List has not seen another Chattanooga since 1929.
However, relics of her do exist and have found new importance.
Plaques commemorating the World War One service of the protected cruiser USS Chattanooga (C-16, PG-30, CL-18) on display in the Douglas MacArthur Memorial, in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. One of the ship’s commanders was Arthur McArthur III, brother of the famed general. Image via Flckr. Ironically, Art Mac Arthur also served on the submarine Holland, built in the same shipyard as Chattanooga and the Grampus, shown near the cruiser in the 1912 image above.
Her bell, image by the Shelbyville Times-Gazette. The bell was made in Chattanooga by the Fischer Evans works. The bell will be displayed at the Navy Ball in Chattanooga this year
Her 200-pound bronze magnesium ship’s bell has been first at the Lions Club hall then the recently shuttered American Legion Post 23 in Shelbyville, Tennessee for more than 85-years. Recently, following the terror attack on the Naval Reserve Center in Chattanooga that claimed the lives of five naval personnel, a reservist from the base, CS1 Gowan Johnson, was able to track the bell down and reclaim it for the center.
While the Navy’s reserve center quarters here are being modified, the USS Chattanooga’s bell has found a temporary home inside the National Medal of Honor Museum in Northgate Mall, where it is displayed along with vintage photos of the ship and crew.
“It’s open to the public to view, and touch, if they like,” explains Charles Googe, a museum volunteer.
Meanwhile, Johnson is hard at work preparing the bell for a more permanent home at the Reserve Center. A cast-iron yoke is being fabricated for the bell, he said, and the shrine will be anchored to a black granite base with a plaque honoring the dead. The emblems of the U.S. Navy and Marines also will be part of the exhibit, he said.
“We are thinking that we could toll the bell five times on July 16 when the names are read for the [shootings anniversary] ceremony,” Johnson said.
In the meantime, Petty Officer Johnson has begun to muse about another possibility, now that the Navy is commissioning a new class of ships bearing the names of American cities.
“How about another ship called the USS Chattanooga?” Johnson said.
Perhaps people in high places will get wind of his idea and answer the bell.
Specs:
Displacement:
3,200 long tons (3,251 t) (standard)
3,514 long tons (3,570 t) (full load)
Length:
308 ft. 9 in (94.11 m) oa
292 ft. (89 m)pp
Beam: 44 ft. (13 m)
Draft: 15 ft. 9 in (4.80 m) (mean)
Installed power:
6 × Babcock & Wilcox boilers
21,000 ihp (16,000 kW)
Propulsion:
2 × vertical triple expansion reciprocating engines, 4700 shp
2 × screws
Sail plan: Schooner
Speed:
16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph)
16.75 knots (31.02 km/h; 19.28 mph) (Speed on Trial)
Range: 2200 nmi at 10 kts
Complement: 31 officers 261 enlisted men
Armament:
10 × 5 in (127 mm)/50 caliber Breech-loading rifles
8 × 6-pounder (57 mm (2.2 in)) rapid fire guns
2 × 1-pounder (37 mm (1.5 in)) guns
Armor:
Deck: 2 1⁄2 in (64 mm) (slope)
3⁄16 in (4.8 mm) (flat)
Shields: 1 3⁄4 in (44 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
I’m a member, so should you be!
Finally, to see where the Chattanooga ranks among U.S. cruiser development, the U.S. Naval Historical Command put out the below infographic.
Warship Wednesday, January 6, 2016: The wandering Italian of Montevideo
Here we see the Hellenic Navy’s one-of-a-kind protected cruiser Salamis, err, make that the Regina Marina’s cruiser (ariete torpediniere) Admiral Angelo Emo, or is it Dogali, or is it the Uruguayan Navy’s ROU 25 de Agosto?
Well, about that…
Designed by British naval architect Sir William Henry White, who served as Chief Constructor at the Admiralty, the ship was in good company. Sir William came up with the plans for the Royal Sovereign-class and King Edward VII-class battleships, the royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert III, and the liner RMS Mauretania among his designs for 43 battleships, 26 armored cruisers, 102 protected cruisers, and 74 unarmored warships. Suffice to say, Sir William knew a thing or three about cranking out a decent ship.
Salamis (“ΣΑΛΑΜΙΣ”), a 2260-ton warship of 266-feet in length, carried an impressive half-dozen good Armstrong 15 cm (5.9 in) L/40 guns single mounts with two side by side forward, two astern, and one amidships on each broadside– and was the only such ship to carry these particular guns. Further, making a very sporty 19.66 knots on trials, she was among the fastest major warship in any fleet on that day.
Ordered for the Hellenic Navy on 12 February 1884 at Armstrong Whitworth in Elswick (BuNo.482), she was laid down the next year. She was contracted under the government of Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis who, with tensions brewing with the Ottomans that were lead to war in 1897, was keen on beefing up the Greek Navy. However, when Trikoupis was ushered out of office in May of that year, the new government of Theodoros Deligiannis, not so keen on buying new warships, canceled the contract for Salamis while still on the builder’s ways and Armstrong promptly offered her to Turkey!
(*Trikoupis would return to power and in 1889 buy the new battleships Hydra, Spetsai, and Psara from France, but that’s another story.)
Luckily for the Greeks, the Turkish sale fell through and the Kingdom of Italy, who intended to name her Angelo Emo after the 18th century Grand Admiral of the Republic of Venice and launched her as such, purchased the clearance sale cruiser on 12 February 1887.
The Italian Regina Marina nonetheless commissioned their new cruiser on 28 April 1887 with– instead of Emo’s name– the monicker Dogali to commemorate the slaughter of Colonel Tommaso De Cristoforis’ 500-man battalion by Ras Alula Engida’s 7,000 Ethiopian troops near Massawa in what is now Eritrea in January of that year. This produced the oddity of naming her after a stunning Italian defeat chalked up there with such colonial shellackings as the Battle of Isandlwana (see, Zulu Dawn) and Adwa (like Dogali but way, way worse for the Italians).
Michele Cammarano’s painting depicts the Battle of Dogali on January 26, 1887, with Colonel Tommaso De Cristoforis, with his distinctive black mustache, shown in the fray. It didn’t go well for the Italians.
Serving first with the First Squadron, then after 1897 with the Cruiser Squadron, Dogali was a happy ship despite her namesake and, with her relatively long sea legs (capable of over 4,000 nm range at 10 knots), ventured to the U.S. for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition where she was reviewed along with the other Italian cruisers Etna and Giovanni Bausan in the Hudson, then down to Rio where she stood by in an international armada to protect Italian citizens during a revolt there.
As a training ship for the Italian Navy, Dogali spent most of her career on cruises for naval cadets.
Continuing her overseas work, she waved the flag in the Pacific, spending a few wild nights in Vancouver and later the Gulf of Mexico where her crew enjoyed New Orleans and Pensacola. Again, she visited New York in 1897 for the occasion of the unveiling of Grant’s Tomb.
In 1902, during the Venezuela Crisis, Dogali sailed up the Amazon to Santa Fe in Peru accompanied by the German cruiser SMS Falke (at the time Italy, Germany, and Austria were allies).
In 1908, with her unique power plant and armament something of a logistical sore thumb to the Italians, and with a looming refit on her 20-year old high-mileage machinery, Rome approached Peru for a possible sale which fell through then, in the end, sold her off to the Armada Nacional del Uruguay, who commissioned her first as República Oriental del Uruguay’s 25 de Agosto after the date of the country’s independence from Spain and then later as ROU Montevideo after the capital– though she never did get that refit.
In later life, she sported a white scheme
At over 2,000-tons and mounting 6×5.9-inchers, she far eclipsed anything the Uruguayan navy had ever owned and was part of the tiny service’s early 20th Century naval build-up that included the armed steamer Vanguardia, the brand-new 1,400-ton German-built gunboat Uruguay (2×4.7-inch guns), and the dispatch boat Oriental.
The problem was, there just weren’t enough seasoned jacks and officers (the Uruguayan naval academy was only just founded in 1907) to man all these ships.
Before the big (for Uruguay) Italian cruiser joining the fleet, the largest ship the Armada had ever operated was the elderly 127-foot French-built wooden gunboat General Suárez (ex-Tactique) which had locomotive boilers and a crew of just 65 officers and rates. To jump from that to a cruiser that required a crew of over 200 to make way was a stretch.
With the addition of the ex-Dogali to the fleet, the Uruguayans discarded Suarez as well as the old Austrian-built gunboat General Artigas (300-tons) and the German-built armed merchant steamer Malvinas (400-tons) while transferring the paddle-wheel river gunboat Barón de Río Branco (300-tons) to the Ministry of the Interior– then took all of their crews and piled them up on the much larger new ship. Talk about Brady Bunch.
With that in mind, after 1910, when the new and less labor-intensive ROU Uruguay arrived from Germany, our aging cruiser Montevideo rarely left port. ROU Uruguay did most of the “at sea” work for the Armada after that date (and they only got rid of this relic from Imperial Germany in 1962!)
Uruguayan Protected Cruiser Montevideo pictured in 1917. She was largely a fleet in being for several years.
A different view of the same from above
Montevideo remained as a “fleet in being” for another two decades at her dock, still flying the flag and giving and receiving salutes, though largely unmanned.
In 1912, while on a short sea cruise Montevideo nearly foundered near the Brazilian coast and had to be towed back, an ignoble fate for a once-proud vessel.
In 1914, Montevideo was disarmed and served as a stationary training and receiving ship (crucero escuela) for the Armada.
During World War I, Uruguay sided against Germany and broke off diplomatic relations, though never entered the war, thus ensuring our elderly cruiser had very limited use during the Great War that ensnared all of her former officials and potential owners and builders up to that time.
Finally, in 1932 she was sold for scrap at age 45, to make room at the wayside for three new 180-ton gunboats and a three-masted sail-training/survey ship which better suited the nation’s needs.
Her service to Uruguay is commemorated in several postage stamps in that country, after all, she was the fleet flag for over 20 years, though usually flew it in port only.
Montevideo would arguably be the most powerful warship to ever sail under the flag of Uruguay and was the only cruiser ever operated by that country. And after all, in a fleet with no battleships or carriers, the cruiser is king!
Montevideo was also the largest Uruguayan naval ship until the Armada picked up a pre-owned trio of 1960s-era Commandant Rivière-class sloops (frigates) from France (2,230-tons/321-feet oal/ 3×4-inch guns) at the end of the Cold War, which in turn replaced a pair of smaller WWII-era Cannon-class destroyer escorts. While the old cruiser has a few tons on these craft, they are some 60+ feet longer.
As a note, just two of the trio of French frigates remain in some sort of nominal service, and one of these, the former Admiral Charner (F727) has carried the name ROU Montevideo (F3) since 1991, keeping our subject’s memory alive.
040616-N-8148A-047 South Pacific Ocean (June 16, 2004) Ð An SH-60F Seahawk assigned to the “Indians” of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Six (HS-6) flies past the Uruguayan Naval Frigate, Montevideo. HS-6 is embarked on USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), which is currently circumnavigating South America to her new homeport of San Diego, Calif. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Kitt Amaritnant (RELEASED)
Specs:
Displacement: 2,050 t (2,020 long tons; 2,260 short tons)
Length: 76.2 m (250 ft.) waterline, 266.75 oal.
Beam: 11.28 m (37.0 ft.)
Draft: 4.42 m (14.5 ft.)
Propulsion: 2-shaft triple expansion engines 7197 shp.
Speed: 17.68 knots (32.74 km/h; 20.35 mph)
Range: 4,000 nmi (7,400 km; 4,600 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) with 430 tons of coal
Complement: 12 officers 232 crew, though in Italian service was more and in Uruguayan much less.
Armament: (most removed 1914)
6 × 152mm (5.9 in) L/40 guns
9 × 57 mm (2.2 in) guns
6 × Gatling guns
4 × 356 mm (14.0 in) torpedo tubes
1 75mm gun added 1898.
Armor:
Deck: 50 mm (2.0 in)
Conning tower: 50 mm
Gun shields: 110 mm (4.3 in)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Warship Wednesday Dec.30, 2015: Subkiller of the Florida Keys
Image by Chris Eger. All others this post are either by me, or the USCG Historian’s office
Here we see the Treasury-class United States Coast Guard Cutter Samuel D. Ingham (WPG/AGC/WHEC-35) dockside of the old Navy submarine base at Key West near Fort Zachary Taylor, part of the Truman Annex to Naval Air Station Key West, where she has been as a museum ship since 2009.
Same view of Ingham back in the late 1960s, just after she picked up her “racing stripe.”
In the mid-1930s, the Coast Guard had some 40~ oceangoing cutters consisting of a few pre-WWI era slow boats and a host of 165 and 240/250-foot vessels designed for bluewater rum-runner busting during Prohibition. With the Volstead Act repealed and the boozecraft disappearing, the new push in the Treasury department once Mr. Roosevelt took office was for long-legged boats to help patrol the nation’s burgeoning international air traffic routes to affect rescues and provide weather support.
Although the Coasties came up with their own design for a stretched version of their 250-foot Lake-class cutters, the Navy had just coughed up a new gunboat design– the two Erie-class gunboats USS Erie (PG-50) and USS Charleston (PG-51) — which the service could save some bread on by gently modifying. Instead of the Erie‘s 6”/47 Mk17s, the Coast Guard went with 5”/51’s and saved money in other areas, building their cutters out at about 30 percent less cost than the Eries.
These seven new cutters, classified gunboats (WPG) in Treasury service, were all named after former Secretaries of that cabinet branch with USCGC George M. Bibb (WPG-31) laid down 15 August 1935 followed quickly by Campbell, Warship Weds alumni Spencer, Duane, Taney, Hamilton and the hero of our story, Ingham— named after Andrew Jackson’s Treasury boss. However, shortly after commissioning all of the names were trimmed to the last name only.
U.S.S. ‘Samuel D. Ingham’ Entering At Havana Harbor-Nov. 12 1936
Capable of over 20-knots and with the capability to carry a seaplane (a JF-2 amphibian), these 327-foot long, 2400-ton cutters could roam across the ocean and back again with an impressive 12,300-nm range. A pair of 5-inch/51-caliber guns augmented a few 6-pounder guns was impressive enough for shallow water (can float in 13 feet of sea) gunboat and seen as more than adequate to stop smugglers and sink derelict vessels on the high seas. In a pinch, the armament could be increased in time of war, which the Navy was keenly aware of.
These cutters were designed from the outset to accommodate a floatplane
Built at Philadelphia Naval Yard (Ingham was born at Great Spring near New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1779), the cutter carrying his name was commissioned on 12 September 1936 and was the fourth cutter to bear that name. She was assigned to Port Angeles, Washington, where she participated in arduous Bering Sea patrols until the start of WWII in Europe.
Ingham’s crew undergoing the prewar battle practice, in this case firing both of her main 5-inch 50-caliber main batteries.
Given a tasking for “Grand Banks Patrols,” Ingham was homeported in Boston with orders to identify foreign men-of-war, be on the lookout for any “un-neutral” activities, and report anything of an unusual nature. Each cruise lasted approximately two weeks. The cutters ran with their ensign illuminated by searchlight at all times and prefaced all signals with Coast Guard identification. This transitioned to three-week long weather station duty in the North Atlantic with embarked meteorologists.
In December 1940, she was up-armed with things growing increasingly tense in the North Atlantic and transferred for duty with the Navy on 1 July 1941 and her Coast Guard crew intact, spending part of the year as a floating embassy in spy-rich Lisbon for the U. S. ambassador to Portugal.
Assigned to CINCLANT at the U.S. entrance to the war, she soon began a series of convoy operations, escorting no less than 28 convoys back and forth from the East Coast to Iceland between Dec. 1941 and March 1943. Some were pure milk runs. Others were not.
On SC-107, 16 ships were torpedoed.
On ONSJ-160, Ingham reduced speed and ceased zigzagging as a force 12 hurricane developed and then had to spend three days searching for stragglers.
It was in this duty she rescued survivors from the torpedoed SS Henry R. Mallory, Robert E. Hopkins, West Portal, Jeremiah Van Rensseler, and all hands of the Matthew Luckenback.
Then there was the time she gesunken a U-boat.
Ingham fitted out for escort of convoy and anti-submarine warfare. Note her camouflage
Ingham, along with USS Babbitt and USS Leary was near Iceland, where they stumbled on the brand new German Type VIIC submarine U-626 which was on her maiden patrol on 15 December 1942. The cutter made sonar contact with an object and dropped depth charges on the sub, sinking her and killing her entire crew of 47 though some argue the point.
During the 8 to 12 watch tonight, while on patrol 3 miles ahead of the convoy, we picked up screw-beats of a submarine while listening, ran in and dropped three 600-pounders. Then, getting contact on the U-boat again by echo-ranging we made another run and gave it a 10-charge barrage. Search was continued for some time, but contact was not regained. There is a strong possibility that we sunk him without forcing him to the surface.
Another surface action in June 1942:
On the 16th, the Ingham broke away from the convoy to investigate a light brown smoke on the horizon and on approaching closer definitely sighted a submarine with conning tower and diesel oil smoke from the exhaust plainly visible. The Ingham increased speed to 19 knots and gave chase, firing one round from the forward 5″ gun at a range of 13,000 yards.
Then in 1944, she found herself in the Med, chasing sonar contacts off Morocco and Spain before assuming flagship of the Senior Mediterranean Escort Group.
U.S.C.G.C. W 35. NAVY YARD, NEW YORK. 28 May 1944 Photo No. F644C6169
Then in May, Ingham proceeded back to the states for conversion to an AGC (Combined operations communications headquarters ship) which took most of the rest of the year and led to her shipping for the Pacific, arriving Dec 26th at Humboldt Bay, reporting to Commander, Seventh Fleet.
USS Ingham, CG (WAGC-35)U.S. Navy Yard, S.C. . .U.S.S. INGHAM, (W 35), Starboard BowPhoto No. 2878-44 11 October 1944
By February 1945, as the flag of Commander, Task Group 76.3, Ingham was the HQ and guide ship for the Mariveles-Corregidor Attack Group in the PI and later oversaw the beach landings at Tigbauan, Pulupandan, Macajalar Bay, Sarangani Bay and the seizure of Balut Island. In these attacks she frequently let her 5-inchers release hate on Japanese shore positions while dodging underwater obstacles and swimming sappers.
Ingham as an AGC 1944
Commander Dean W. Colbert wrote in his memoir of life on board Ingham of her crowding at the time with four men assigned to a single rack:
“. . .during major landings, we accommodated up to 360 persons onboard and there was literally standing room only. . .Mealtime was a carefully orchestrated operation. Up to 1000 meals per day were prepared and served out of a galley roughly the size of a kitchen in a 4-bedroom house. . .It was a challenge by any standard, but Ingham’s crew rose to the occasion. Many of the ‘black gang’ . . .and other crew members had been on board during the worst of the U-boat campaigns in the North Atlantic. As a whole, the crew was superb, especially the chief and first class petty officers. They were a tremendously capable and reliable group.”
The end of the war found her off Okinawa as the flag of Adm. Buckmaster who sailed into Shanghai and Haiphong to help coordinate occupation efforts with Chinese army officials.
On 6 January 1946, she arrived back on the East Coast in New York, landed her armament, got her white paint scheme back, and picked up where she left off as a cutter.
Homeported at Norfolk, Virginia, she spent the next 22 years on quiet weather station duty, assisting those in peril at sea and conducting law enforcement operations.
Then came another war.
1965. She would pick up the racing stripe two years later, and ship for Southeast Asia a year after that.
Becoming part of Coast Guard Squadron Three in 1968, Ingham soon became part of the Navy’s Operation Market Time interdiction and coastal surveillance effort in Vietnam. She spent a year in CGS3, conducting numerous naval gunfire support missions, serving as a mothership to Navy Swift boats and Coast Guard 82-foot patrol boats, sending medical teams ashore to win hearts and minds in local seaside hamlets, and stopping anything that moved inside her area of operation.
As noted by her official USCG history, “She participated in Operation Sea Lords and Operation Swift Raiders, earning an unprecedented two Presidential Unit Citations, the only cutter to be so honored.”
18 July 1978 Photo No. G-BPA-07-18-78
Still homeported in Virginia, Ingham picked up where she left off in 1969 and continued ocean station duty until the stations themselves were disbanded in 1980.
Atlantic Weather Observation Service “ocean stations” on which thousands of Coast Guardsmen served through most of the Cold War
After that, she was a favorite vessel of the USCGA in New London, taking cadets on summer cruises that lasted up to 10 weeks at a time and continuing to do so until 1985.
She took breaks from cadet training to seize drug runners (the Honduran fishing trawler Mary Ann, where the boarding team discovered 15 tons of marijuana in 1979, and the vessel Misfit carrying 35 tons of marijuana in 1982) as well as saving hundreds of lives during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980– often landing refugees and towing Cuban vessels to Key West for processing.
She outlasted all of her sisters in service, with Hamilton being torpedoed during the war off Iceland 29 January 1942, Spencer sold for scrap in 1981, Campbell decommissioned in 1982 and sunk as a target, Bibb and Duane decommissioned in 1985, and Pearl Harbor survivor Taney decommissioned 7 December 1986.
On 1 August 1985, Ingham‘s hull numbers were painted gold, signifying she was the oldest commissioned Coast Guard vessel in service, period. On 24 May 1988, she was decommissioned with a salute from President Reagan. It was the first time in 52 years that she did not have an official tasking.
Ingham in her pre-1967 livery by William H Ravell
USCGC Ingham Decommissioning Ceremony 1988:
Saved as a memorial, she was at first a museum ship at Patriot’s Point, S.C., and then, after dry-dock and repairs, at Key West. A maritime museum keeps her in excellent condition and in 1995 was made the official site of the USCGs WWII memorial per order of the commandant.
I had a chance to tour Ingham last month and here is a sampling of her current disposition:
The ship is a time capsule from her last use in May 1988. I was told the only thing the Coast Guard did when they turned her over was dewat the guns, remove the classified documents from the safe, and pull some sensitive internal panels from the commo, sonar, and radar suites.
Officers mess
Remember the comment about a galley for a typical 4 BR house?
Holy 2600, batman
The enlisted mess
Japanese samurai sword picked up in 1945
GMs locker.Dig the M2 giant size training tool and the 20mm OK
Barber
Captain’s cabin
Captain’s cabin. This would be the berth of the Admiral when she was an AGC in WWII
Commo anyone?
Looking forward, note her 5″/38, and saluting gun. Malloy Square and Duval Street are a few blocks up.
CIC
Her bridge is off limits, but note all the brightwork and 1930s-style porthole row
Her sistership Taney has been preserved in Baltimore harbor since her decommissioning while sisters, Duane and Bibb, are only about a half hour away from Ingham‘s current location, both sunk as an artificial reef off Key Largo, on 27 November 1987.
As a nod to her many years of service to the USCGA, Inghamis often graced with visits from cadets who spend vacation time sleeping in the onboard berths, scraping paint, and repairing heads.
When in Key West, she is well worth a stop.
Specs:
Via shipbucket
Via shipbucket
Via shipbucket
Displacement 2,350 t. (lt)
Length 327′ 0″
Beam 41′ 0″
Draft 12′ 6″ (max.)
Propulsion
two Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbines
two Babcock & Wilcox sectional express, air-encased, 400 psi, 200° superheat
two 9′ three-bladed propellers, 6,200shp (1966)
Fuel Capacity NSFO 135,180 gallons (547 tons)
Speed 20.5 kts (max)
Electronics:
HF/DF: (1942) DAR (converted British FH3) ?
Radar: (1945) SC-2, SGa; (1966) AN/SPS-29D, AN/SPA-52.
Fire Control Radar: (1945) Mk-26; (1966) Mk-26 MOD 4
Sonar: (1945) QC series; (1966) AN/SQS-11
Complement 1937
12 officers
4 warrant officers
107 enlisted 1941
16 officers
4 warrant officers
202 enlisted 1966
10 officers
3 warrant officers
134 enlisted
Armament: 1936
2 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
2 6-pdrs
1 1-pdr 1941
3 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
3 single 3″/50 cal dual purpose gun mounts
4 .50 caliber Browning Machine Guns
2 depth charge racks
“Y” gun depth charge projector 1943
2 single 5″/51 cal gun mounts
4 single 3″/50 cal dual gun mounts
2 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts
Hedgehog device
6 “K” gun depth charge projectors
2 depth charge racks 1945
2 single 5″/38 cal dual purpose gun mounts
3 twin 40mm/60 AA gun mounts
4 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts 1946
2 single 5″/38 cal dual gun mount
1 twin 40mm;/60 AA gun mount
8 single 20mm/80 AA gun mounts
1 Hedgehog 1966
1 single 5″/38 MK30 Mod75 cal dual-purpose gun mount w/ MK 52 MOD 3 director
1 MK 10-1 Hedgehog (removed)
2 (P&S) x Mk 32 MOD 5 TT
4 MK 44 MOD 1 torpedoes
2 .50 cal. MK-2 Browning Machine Guns
2 MK-13 high altitude parachute flare mortars
Aircraft (discontinued after WWII)
1936, Grumman JF-2, V148
1938, Curtiss SOC-4
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Warship Wednesday, Dec.23, 2015: The lost jewel from Bizerte
960×633
Here we see the French Émeraude-class diesel-electric submarine (Sous-Marin) Turquoise (Q46), captured by the Turks, in a dry dock undergoing repairs in Constantinople, 1916.
The French got into the submarine business about the same time as the Americans, launching Admiral Simeon Bourgois’s Plongeurin April 1863.
Before the turn of the century, the Republic had flirted with a half dozen one-off boats before they ordered the four boats of the Sirene class in 1901 followed quickly by another four of the Farfadet-class, the two Algerien-class boats, 20 Naiade-class craft in 1904, Submarines X, Y and Z (not making it up), the two ship Aigrette-class and the submarine Omega.
All told, between 1900-1905, the French coughed up 36 submersibles spread across nine very different classes.
After all that quick learning curve, they proceeded with the Emeraude (Emerald) class in 1903. These ships were an improvement of the Faradet (Sprite) class designed by Gabriel-Émile-Marie Maugas. The 135-foot long/200-ton Faradet quartet had everything a 20th Century smoke boat needed: it was a steel-hulled hybrid submersible that used diesel engines on the surface and electric below, had 4 torpedo tubes, could dive to 100~ feet, and could make a stately 6-knots.
Farfadet-class boat Lutin (Q10), leaving port in 1903.
While they weren’t successful (two sank, killing 30 men between them) Maugas learned from early mistakes and they were significantly improved in the Emeraudes. These later boats used two-shaft propulsion– rare in early submarines–and were 147 feet long with a 425-ton full load. Capable of making right at 12 knots for brief periods, they carried a half dozen torpedo tubes (four in the bow and two in the stern). They also could mount a machine gun and a light deck gun if needed.
Again, improvements!
Profile of the Emeralds surfaced.
Class leader Emeraude was laid down at Arsenal de Cherbourg in 1903 followed by sisters Opale and Rubis at the same yard and another three, Saphir, Topase, and the hero of our story, Turquoise, at Arsenal de Toulon in the Med.
Launching 1908
Turquoise was commissioned on 10 December 1910 and, with her two Toulon-built sisters, served with the French Mediterranean Fleet from the Submarine Station at Bizerte.
She repeated the bad luck of the Farfadet-class predecessors and in 1913 lost an officer and several crew swept off her deck in rough seas.
When war erupted in 1914, the jewel boats soon found they had operational problems staying submerged due to issues with buoyancy and were plagued by troublesome diesels (hey, the manufacturer, Sautter-Harlé, was out of business by 1918 so what does that tell you).
To help with surface ops, Topase and Turquoise were fitted with a smallish deck gun in 1915.
Saphir probably would have been too, but she caught a Turkish mine in the Sea of Marma on 15 January trying to sneak through the straits, and went down.
Topase and Turquoise continued to operate against the Turks, with the latter running into trouble on 30 October 1915. Around the village of Orhaniye in the Dardanelles near Nagara there were six Ottoman Army artillerymen led by Corporal G Boaz Deepa who spotted a periscope moving past a nearby water tower.
Becoming tangled in a net, the submarine became a sitting duck. With their field piece, they were able to get a lucky shot on the mast, and, with the submarine filling with water, she made an emergency surface.
French submarine captured at Dardanelles by Charles Fouqueray
There, the six cannoneers took 28 French submariners captive and impounded the sub, sunk in shallow water.
Turquoise’s skipper, Lt. Leon Marie Ravenel, was in 1918 awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour as was his XO. These sailors suffered a great deal in Turkish captivity, with five deaths.
“Das frühere französische U-Boot Turquoise welches von den Türken gefangen genommen wurde und jetzt als Mustedjb oubaschi in türkischen Diensten steht.” (The former French submarine Turquoise which was captured by the Turks and is now in Turkish service as Mustedjb oubaschi.) Paul Hoffman & Co. postcard in the NYPL collection
The Turks later raised the batter French boat and, naming her Mustadieh Ombashi (or Müstecip Ombasi), planned to use her in the Ottoman fleet.
The news of her capture and use under new management flashed through the Central Powers. This is from the Austrian archives:
“Französische Unterseeboot Turquoise” via Osterreichisches Staatsarchiv
Ottoman Uniforms reports her conning tower was painted with a large rectangle (likely to be red), with the large white script during this time.
Via Ottoman Uniforms
However, as submariners were rare in WWI Constantinople, she never took to sea in an operational sense again and in 1919 the victorious French reclaimed their submarine, which they later scrapped in 1920.
Her wartime service for the Turks seems to have been limited to taking a few pictures for propaganda purposes and being used as a fixed battery charging station for German U-boats operating in the Black Sea.
As for the last Bizerte boat, Topase, she finished the war intact and was stricken on 12 November 1919 along with the three Emeraudes who served quietly in the Atlantic.
Turquoise/Mustadieh Ombashi has been preserved as a model, however.
If you have a further interest in the submarines of Gallipoli, go here.
Specs:
1884×1543
Displacement 392 tons (surfaced) / 427 (submerged)
Length, 147 feet
Bean 12 feet
Draft 12 feet
No of shafts 2
Machinery
2 Sautter-Harlé diesels, 600hp / electric motors (440kW)
Max speed, knots 11.5 surfaced / 9.2 submerged
Endurance, nm 2000 at 7.3kts surfaced / 100nm at 5kts submerged
Armament:
6×450 TT (4 bows, 2 sterns) for 450mm torpedoes with no reloads
1x M1902 Model 37mm deck gun, 1x8mm light Hotchkiss machine gun (fitted in 1915)
Complement 21-28
Diving depth operational, 130 feet.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Warship Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015: The Long-Legged Bird of the Java Sea
Naval History and Heritage Command#: NH 85178
Here we see the humble Lapwing-class minesweeper USS Heron (AM-10/AVP-2) while fitting out at her builders in late 1918, being rushed to completion to help serve in the Great War. While her service “over there” was rather quiet in the end, her trip to the other side of the world and experiences in another world war would prove more exciting.
When a young upstart by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Navy Department in 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he helped engineer one of the largest naval build-ups in world history. By the time the U.S. entered World War I officially in 1917, it may have been Mr. Wilson’s name in the role of Commander in Chief, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s fleet.
One of his passions was the concept of the Great North Sea Mine Barrage, a string of as many as 400,000 (planned) sea mines that would shut down the Kaiser’s access once and for all to the Atlantic and saving Western Europe (and its overseas Allies) from the scourge of German U-boats. A British idea dating from late 1916, the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Sims thought it was a bullshit waste of time but it was FDR’s insistence to President Wilson in the scheme that ultimately won the day.
While a fleet of converted steamships (and two old cruisers- USS San Francisco and USS Baltimore) started dropping mines in June 1918, they only managed to sow 70,177 by Armistice Day and accounted for a paltry two U-boats gesunken (although some estimates range as high as 8 counting unaccounted-for boats).
And the thing is, you don’t throw that many mines in international shipping lanes without having a plan to clean them up after the war (while having the bonus of using those mine countermeasures ships to sweep enemy-laid fields as well).
That’s where the 54 vessels of the Lapwing-class came in.
Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there but is not seen in the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903. Note the crow’s nest for sighting floating mines.
Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, these 187-foot long ships were large enough, at 965-tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)
They could also use a sail rig to poke along at low speed with no engines, a useful trait for working in a minefield.
Lapwing-class sister USS Falcon AM-28 in Pensacola Bay 1924 with the Atlantic submarine fleet. Note her rig
Not intended to do much more than clear mines, they were given a couple 3-inch pop guns to discourage small enemy surface combatants intent to keep minesweepers from clearing said mines. The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.
This leads us to the hero of our tale, USS Heron.
Laid down at the Standard Shipbuilding Co. in Boston, she was the first U.S. Navy ship to carry that name, that of a long-legged seabird of the Gulf Coast. Like all her sisters, they carried bird names.
Commissioned 30 October 1918, the war ended 12 days later but she was still very much needed to help take down that whole barrage thing. Therefore, she arrived in the Orkney Islands in the spring of 1919 where, along with 28 of her sisters and a host of converted British trawlers, she scooped up Mk.6 naval mines from the deep for the rest of the year.
When she returned home, she was transferred to the far off Asiatic Fleet, sailing for Cavite PI in October 1920.
There, she was laid up in 1922, with not much need of an active minesweeper.
Then, with the Navy figuring out these economical little boats with their shallow draft (they could float in ten feet of seawater) could be used for any number of side jobs, started re-purposing them.
Six of the “Old Birds” were reclassified as salvage ships (ARSs) while another half-dozen became submarine rescue ships (ASRs). The Coast Guard picked up USS Redwing for use as a cutter during Prohibition while the U.S. Coast & Geographic Survey acquired USS Osprey and USS Flamingo and the Shipping Board accepted USS Peacock as a tug.
A few were retained as minesweepers in the reserve fleet, some used as depot ships/net layers, one converted to a gunboat, another to an ocean-going tug, three were sunk during peacetime service (USS Cardinal struck a reef off Dutch Harbor in 1923 while USS Curlew did the same off Panama in 1926 and USS Sanderling went down in 1937 by accident in Hawaii) while nine– Heron included– became seaplane tenders.
While these ships could only carry 1-2 seaplanes on deck, they typically milled around with a converted barge alongside that could park a half dozen or more single-engine floatplanes for service and support.
U.S. Navy Small Seaplane Tender USS Heron (AVP-2); no date. Note the floatplane service barge alongside. Image via USNI collection.
Recommissioned in 1924 (later picking up the hull number AVP-2, as a Small Seaplane Tender), Heron was photographed with a variety of floatplanes including Grumman JF amphibians and Vought O2U-2 scout planes in the 20s and 30s.
Carrying two Vought O2U-2 scout planes of Scouting Eight (VS-8) while serving in the Asiatic Fleet on 15 December 1930. Photo No. 80-G-1017155 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-80-G
Serving as an aircraft tender before 1936. Note the aviation roundel on her bow.
She continued her quiet existence in the South China Sea and elsewhere in Chinese and Philippine waters, filling in as a target tower, survey ship, and gunboat when needed.
U.S. warships inside and outside the breakwater, circa the later 1930s. Color-tinted photograph by the Ah-Fung O.K. Photo Service. Among the ships present are USS Black Hawk (AD-9), in the left-center, with a nest of four destroyers alongside. USS Whipple (DD-217) is the outboard unit of these four. USS Heron (AM-10) is alongside the breakwater, at right, with a Grumman JF amphibian airplane on her fantail. Another JF is floating inside the breakwater, toward the left. Two Chinese sampans are under sail in the center foreground. The four destroyers outside the breakwater are (from left to right): USS Stewart (DD-224), unidentified, USS Bulmer (DD-222), and USS Pillsbury (DD-227). Collection of James E. Thompson, 1979. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 90544-KN
Stationed at Port Ciego, Philippines when the balloon went up, Heron was luckier than several of her sisters in the same waters, with six sunk in six months.
USS Tanager (AM-5), Sunk by Japanese shore battery fire off Bataan, 4 May 1942.
USS Finch (AM-9), Damaged by Japanese bomb (near-miss), 9 Apr 1942 while moored at the eastern point of Corregidor. Abandoned, 10 Apr 1942. Salvaged by Imperial Japanese Navy; renamed W-103. Sunk for good by US carrier aircraft in early 1945.
USS Quail (AM-15) Damaged by Japanese bombs and guns at Corregidor, she was scuttled 5 May 1942 to prevent capture.
USS Penguin (AM-33) Damaged by Japanese aircraft in Agana Harbor, Guam, 8 Dec 1941; scuttled in 200 fathoms to prevent capture.
USS Bittern (AM-36) Heavily damaged by Japanese aircraft at Cavite Navy Yard, Philippines; scuttled in Manila Bay to prevent capture.
USS Pigeon (AM-47) sunk by Japanese aircraft at Corregidor, 4 May 1942.
Heron was ordered to leave the PI for Ambon Island, part of the Maluku Islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), a strategic key to the area held by some 3,000 Dutch and Australian troops. There, along with USS William B. Preston (AVD 7), she supported PBYs of Patrol Wing TEN until the going got tough and the island was overrun in February 1942.
It was during this time at Ambon that Heron became a legend. Upon hearing that the four-piper USS Peary (DD-226) was damaged, she sortied out to help assist or tow if needed but was caught by Japanese flying boats and proceeded to fight them off over several hours.
The Heron, which was sent north to assist the Peary, was herself bombed in a protracted action in Molucca Strait on the 31st. Shrapnel from near hits penetrated the ship’s side and started fires in the paint locker and forward hold. About the middle of the afternoon, a 100-pound shrapnel bomb struck the foremast near the top and sprayed the ship with splinters, which did considerable damage. The Heron acquitted herself well, however, in spite of her 12-knot speed, and succeeded in shooting down a large enemy seaplane.
“Evasion of Destruction” by Richard DeRosset portrays a strafing run by three Japanese “Mavis” flying boats following their unsuccessful torpedo attack on the USS Heron (AVP-2) on 31 December 1941. Heron shot down one of the aircraft with her starboard 3-inch gun; her port gun had been disabled by earlier combat action. This final attack followed a series of earlier ones by twelve other enemy aircraft against the seaplane tender as she sailed alone in the Java Sea. Due to heroic actions by her captain and crew, Heron survived seemingly overwhelming odds during the long ordeal. Heron had approximately 26 casualties, or about 50 percent of the crew, because of the attack.
For her valiant action during this period, Heron received the Navy Unit Commendation.
The rest of her war service was less eventful, serving in Australian waters as a patrol boat and seaplane tender until 1944 when she began moving back to the PI with the massive Allied armada to retake the archipelago. She conducted search and rescue operations and assisted in landings where needed, still providing tender service until she was decommissioned at Subic Bay, Philippines 12 February 1946, earning four battle stars for the War.
Sold for scrap to a Chinese concern in Shanghai in 1947, Heron‘s ultimate fate is unknown but she may have lingered on as a trawler or coaster for some time or in some form.
As for the rest of her class, others also served heroically in the war with one, USS Vireo, picking up seven battle stars for her service as a fleet tug from Pearl Harbor to Midway to Guadalcanal and Okinawa. The Germans sank USS Partridge at Normandy and both Gannet and Redwing via torpedoes in the Atlantic. Most of the old birds remaining in U.S. service were scrapped in 1946-48 with the last on Uncle Sam’s list, Flamingo, sold for scrap in July 1953.
Some lived on as trawlers and one, USS Auk (AM-38) was sold to Venezuela in 1948, where she lasted until 1962 as the gunboat Felipe Larrazabal. After her decommissioning, she was not immediately scrapped and was reported afloat in a backwater channel as late as 1968. Her fate after that is not recorded but she was likely the last of the Lapwings.
For Heron‘s memory, the Navy passed on her name to two different mine countermeasures ships since WWII.
The first, the 136-foot USS Heron (MSC(O)-18/AMS-18/YMS-369), was renamed in 1947 and went on to win 8 battlestars in Korea before serving in the Japanese Self Defense Forces as JDS Nuwajima (MSC-657) until 1967.
The second and, as of now final, U.S. Navy ship with the historic name, USS Heron (MHC-52) was an Osprey-class coastal minehunter commissioned in 1994 and transferred while still in her prime to Greece in 2007 as Kalipso.
But that’s another story.
Specs:
Displacement: 950 tons FL (1918) 1,350 tons (1936)
Length: 187 feet 10 inches
Beam: 35 feet 6 inches
Draft: 9 feet 9 in
Propulsion: Two Babcock and Wilcox header boilers, one 1,400shp Harlan and Hollingsworth, vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft.
Speed: 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph); 12~ by 1936.
Complement: 78 Officers and Enlisted as completed; Upto 85 by 1936
Armament: 2 × 3-inch/23 single mounts as commissioned (1930)
2 x 3″/50 DP singles
4 Lewis guns (1944)
2 x 3″/50 DP singles
Several 20mm Oerlikons and M2 12.7mm mounts
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Here we see the Illustrious-class fleet carrier HMS Formidable (R67) of the Royal Navy. This war baby flattop, completed in the darkest days of World War II when Britain stood alone, was used hard during the war, rushed from fight to fight, and at times was the only carrier in the region. In many ways, she was HM’s equivalent to the USS Enterprise (CV-6).
During WWII, the Royal Navy saw the writing on the wall in the respect that, to remain a first-rate naval power with a global reach, it needed a fleet of modern aircraft carriers. Entering the war in 1939 with three 27,000-ton Courageous-class carriers converted from battlecruiser hulls, the 22,000 ton battleship-hulled HMS Eagle, the unique 27,000-ton Ark Royal, and the tiny 13,000-ton HMS Hermes (pennant 95, the world’s first ship to be designed as an aircraft carrier)– a total of six flattops, within the first couple years of the war 5/6th of these were sent to the bottom by Axis warships and aircraft.
Luckily two 32,000-ton Implacable-class and four 23,000-ton Illustrious-class carriers, laid down before the war, were able to join the fleet to help make good those losses until the follow-on Colossus-class light fleet carriers, and Audacious-class, Malta-class supercarriers (57,000-tons), and 8 planned Centaur-class carriers could be built (although most weren’t).
The Illustrious-class, designed before the war, was limited by the restrictions of the Second London Naval Treaty in displacement (much like the pre-war U.S. carriers). With concerns about the vulnerability of flattops in the 1930s to air attack– the Brits were forward-thinking in this– the “Lusties” were laid out with their hangar in an armored box, with 3-inches of steel plate on the roof and 4.5 on the side to protect against either 5-inch naval shells or 1,000-pound iron bombs. This and the fact the Brits refused to keep aircraft stored on deck limited their air wing to just 36 aircraft.
The 740-foot/23,000-ton Lusties were comparable to the 824-foot/25,000-ton U.S. Yorktown-class aircraft carriers though the Brits had twice the AAA battery with 16 QF 4.5-inchers while the Yanks had 8×5-inchers and other small pieces. Likewise, the two classes had comparable speed (30~ knots) and range (over 10,000 nm) for overseas operations. However, the Yorktown trio (Yorktown, Hornet, Enterprise), while they did have an armored tower and belt, lacked the deck/hangar armor of the Lusties but, due to their huge hangar and doctrine to store planes on “the roof” could accommodate as many as 90 in their air wing.
All of the Illustrious-class carriers were ordered and laid down in 1937 before the start of the war, with three of the four at Vickers with the oddball being Formidable, who was laid down at Harland and Wolff in Belfast– builders of RMS Titanic among others.
HMS Formidable was the 5th (or 6th depending on if you count a French Téméraire class 74-gun third rate ship of the line captured during the Napoleonic Wars with the same name) vessel in the RN to carry the name and between 1759-1953 there were only about 40 years of which the name did not appear on HM’s Naval List, with the last before our WWII flattop being the unlucky battleship torpedoed twice by German submarine U-24 and sunk, 1 January 1915.
Our particular HMS Formidable was commissioned on 24 November 1940 and rushed into service.
Armed with two squadrons of Fairey Albacore biplane torpedo bombers and one of Fairey Fulmar fighters, she engaged in covering convoys searching for German surface raiders for her first few months of the war.
HMS Formidable of the Illustrious-class underway, date, and location unknown.
Chopping to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1941, she started with a bang by sinking the Italian merchantman SS Moncalieri and, during the Battle of Cape Matapan, torpedoing the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and cruiser Pola.
During the evacuation of Greece and Crete, she covered the fleet and kept the German and Italians land-based bombers under thumb with repeated air attacks, accounting for several aerial kills and destruction of aircraft on the ground– although her own air wing dwindled to as low as a dozen operational aircraft at some times.
On 26 May she shrugged off two hits by Stuka dropped 1,100-pound bombs which caused little damage but sent her to Norfolk in the States for repair.
Back in the fight in early 1942, she swapped out her Fulmars for Grumman Martlets (F4F Wildcats) and spent most of the year playing cat and mouse games with the Japanese as part of Admiral Sir James Somerville’s Force A in the Indian Ocean.
HMS Formidable, as part of Force A of the Eastern Fleet returning to Kilindini from Colombo, 2nd July 1942.
HMS Formidable underway in the Indian Ocean off Mombasa, Kenya, 1942
Then in October, she transferred back to her familiar waters of the Med as part of Force H, covering the Torch Landings in North Africa where her planes (with Supermarine Seafires augmenting and later replacing her Martlets) provided air cover, downed some random German aircraft and scratched the German submarine U-331 on 17 November.
Martlet fighters aboard HMS Formidable in the Mediterranean Sea, 1942
Force H warships HMS Duke of York, Nelson, Renown, Formidable, and Argonaut underway off North Africa, November 1942.
She was the sole Allied carrier in the Med for nearly six months and the first one to enter Malta in over 30 after helping cover the Allied invasion of Sicily. In this respect, she emulated the Enterprise‘s lonely experience as the sole operational Allied carrier in the Pacific between the sinking of the USS Wasp (CV-7) in Sept. 1942 and the commissioning of the USS Independence (CVL-22) in January 1943 while Saratoga was in dry-dock undergoing repair from a Japanese torpedo.
Revenge-class battleship HMS Resolution and Illustrious-class aircraft carrier HMS Formidable
Vought Corsair fighters and Fairey Barracuda bombers on the deck of the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable during an operation off Norway, July 1944
In late 1943, Formidable found herself in the frigid North Atlantic with a new air wing of 18 Vought Corsairs and 24 Fairey Barracuda torpedo bombers. She spent the rest of the year as well as most of 1944 escorting convoys and throwing good pilots and brave aircrews at the SMS Tirpitz in a series of air attacks (Operations Mascot and Goodwood) in her lair in a Norwegian fjord which produced few results.
After refit to expand her hangar deck to accommodate 54 aircraft (including a few topside), upgrading her torpedo planes to 18 Grumman TBF Avengers with three dozen Corsairs providing cover, and upping her AAA suite, she sailed for the newly formed British Pacific Fleet of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser in early 1945 as the need for carriers in the European Theater at that time was waning.
RN carriers Victorious, Formidable, Unicorn, Indefatigable, Indomitable, TF57, Leyte Gulf, Apr 1945. Never again has the Royal Navy been this powerful.
This force would be the largest modern fleet the RN ever assembled post-1918, consisting of four battleships and six fleet aircraft carriers, 15 smaller aircraft carriers, 11 cruisers, and a host of escorts, subs, and auxiliaries. It announced Britain’s re-entry into the huge ocean from which it was chased in early 1942. The force sailed with Spruance’s Fifth Fleet as Task Force 57 (TF-57) and then with Halsey’s Third Fleet as TF-37.
Formidable arrived in the Philippines in April 1945, as the war in Europe was in its last days, and was soon in hot action in the Kamikaze-rich waters off Okinawa.
The famous image of Formidable on fire after the kamikaze hit on 4 May, photograph A 29717 from the collections of the Imperial War Museum
On 4 May, she was struck by a Mitsubishi A6M Zero “Zeke” carrying one 550-pound bomb, which created a two-foot square hole and a 24 x 20-foot depression in the armored flight deck.
“No place to land” by Michael Turner. Royal Navy Corsairs return to their carrier HMS Illustrious to find a blazing flight deck following a Kamikaze attack in the southwest Pacific, during the BPF deployment against the Japanese 1945. The print is widely available https://www.studio88.co.uk/acatalog/No_Place_to_Land.html
While splinters penetrated into her engineering spaces and her speed was reduced to 18 knots, she only lost eight men to the attack– though 11 of her aircraft were destroyed in the resulting blast. After a patch job, she was able to operate aircraft by the next morning.
Imperial War Museum picture A29312.
Damage to HMS Formidable deck after the impact of a 550lb-bomb-carrying Kamikaze amidships
Just five days later she was struck by a kamikaze into the after deck park which killed one and wounded eight. The armored deck was depressed 4.5 inches but seven aircraft were destroyed and 11 damaged. Her crew brushed off the deck and was able to launch and land aircraft 50 minutes later but only had a paltry four Avengers and 11 Corsairs left serviceable.
A Pacific Fleet report of May 1945 stated, “Without armored decks, TF 57 would have been out of action (with 4 carriers) for at least 2 months,” a recommendation that was key to adding armored flight decks to all U.S. carriers built after the war.
After some repairs in Australia, she was back in action of the Japanese Home Islands in July.
HMS FORMIDABLE passing through the Sydney Harbor anti-submarine boom net in 1945
On 18 July, Lt. Wally Stradwick, a Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot from Clapham, south London, took off from Formidable in his corsair on a mission to strafe an airfield east of Tokyo.
Lt. Wally Stradwick
He was the first British aviator killed over Japan in the war.
The last entry had been made on July 14, 1945, four days earlier, when Stradwick knew he was about to attack mainland Japan for the first time.
‘We have been at sea for some time now, and for the last week have known where we are next striking – the absolute full, apart from getting out and saying “Hallo” to the yellow baskets,’ he had written.
‘I don’t know if it is a particular fault of this Air Arm or not, but we have been on the ship so long, with long periods between ops, that I feel the full twitch over this coming “do”.
‘The whole thing hinges on strafing. God knows I’m just as scared as anybody flying on any op, but that disappears once the fun starts.
‘However, I like the idea of fighting with brains and skill. Air to air fighting is the ideal. You have to use both whether the odds are for or against you.
Over the next few weeks, Formidable’s aircraft crippled or sank several small Japanese naval and merchant vessels and coasters including the Etorofu-class frigate Amakusa on Aug 9 (with a single 500-pounder dropped from Lt. Robert “Hammy” Hampton Gray’s Corsair, an act that earned the 27-year-old Canadian a posthumous VC, one of only earned by the Fleet Air Arm in the war).
Finale by Don Connolly in 1987, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, CWM 19880046-001. “On 9 August 1945, flying off the British carrier HMS Formidable, Gray led a flight of Corsair fighter-bombers into Onagawa Bay, Japan. With his aircraft riddled by anti-aircraft fire from the shore and from warships in the bay, Gray pressed home an attack on the Japanese ship Amakusa. Flying to within 50 meters of the ship, Gray sank it with a 500-pound bomb, but his badly damaged and burning aircraft crashed moments later, killing him.”
During this time, her aircraft also left the escort carrier Kaiyō a smoking ruin though later attacks by U.S. Army Air Force bombers and the carrier Ticonderoga ended her career for good.
When the end of the war came, Formidable’s days as a carrier were numbered. She spent the next 18 months shuttling Indian, British, and Dutch troops and personnel around the Pacific and back and forth to Europe, carrying up to 1,500 at a time. Her wartime service earned her seven awards.
Aircraft carrier HMS Formidable at Leyte, Philippines late in the war. Note the high elevation of her forward twin 4.5-inch QFs.
In 1946 she received a young replacement gunner, a Scot by the name of Sean Connery who served in the weapons department on HMS Formidable into 1947 though he was released from duty on a 6s pension a year later due to chronic stomach ulcers.
It was planned to refit and keep the battered old girl who had sunk Italian, Japanese, and German ships and received punishment from Axis aircraft in return, but it was found that she was in poor material shape on inspection in 1947. Paid off, she was sold for scrap in January 1953 and towed to Inverkeithing from breaking. Her American counterpart, Enterprise, was laid up at the same time and sold for scrap in 1958.
In all, she carried aircraft from over 20 Air Arm squadrons in her brief seven years of service as a carrier. Of these, 17 have been disbanded while three, No. 820, 829, and 848 remain in service today– all chopper units flying Agusta-Westland Merlin HM.2s. During the war, all three flew torpedo planes (Albacores or Avengers) from Formidible‘s deck.
Formidable was the first of her sisters to meet the torch. Class leader Illustrious and sister Indomitable, also showing severe trauma from wartime service, followed within three years while Victorious, who also survived kamikazes off Okinawa, was extensively reconstructed to operate jets in the 1950s and later carried Gannets, Scimitars, Sea Fury’s, Sea Hawks, Sea Vixen, and Buccaneers until she was put out to pasture in 1969.
Victorious in Grand Harbour, Malta en route back to the UK following her 1966–67 Far East cruise, image via Wiki
Since 1953, the name Formidable has not graced the Royal Navy.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, Dec.2, 2015: The Brass Tiger Fish of the Lifeguard Service
Photo via Navsource. Courtesy of John Hummel.
Here we see the Tench-class diesel-electric submarine USS Tigrone (SS-419/SSR-419/AGSS-419), at the Philadelphia Navy Yard sometime circa 1964 as she is preparing for her next role in the fleet after her first two had proved remarkably different.
With the brilliant success of the Gato-class fleet boats in the first part of the war in the Pacific, the Navy soon ordered 84 follow-on Tench-class boats to an improved design starting in 1944. The same 311-feet long overall as the Gatos, the Tenches were slightly heavier and had longer legs, being able to cover 16,000 nautical miles over their predecessor’s paltry 11,000. This meant they could roam further and stay away longer if needed.
While the Gatos were finished in time to bloody the Japanese fleet, few craft worthy of a torpedo were still around when the Tench class began to reach the Pacific. In fact, just 10 of the class were completed during the war and a further 55 were canceled just after.
Of the 10 that made it to the fight, one is the hero of our little tale.
Named after a species of the tiger shark, USS Tigrone (SS-419) was laid down at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine just a month before D-Day. Her crew nicknamed her the Tiger Fish and she is the only ship on the Naval List to have carried the moniker.
Commissioned on 25 October 1944, she got her first combat patrol underway from Guam on March 21, 1945, with three other U.S. fleet boats in a Yankee wolf pack. Although they spent the better part of two months in Japanese waters, they found few targets and her only brush with combat was to bombard a reef with her rear 5″/25 deck gun (she had a 40mm Bofors single forward).
Her second patrol was more exciting.
On May 25, she took up a lifeguard station off the coast of Honshu, Japan, and by end of the week had a full house, picking up the crews of two B-29s that had ditched as well as three fighter pilots. U.S. submarines rescued 504 downed airmen– to include future President George Bush– during WWII lifeguard duty.
“TIGRONE has saved the Air Force and is now returning to Iwo Jima with 28 rescued zoomies,” radioed her skipper, CDR. Hiram Cassedy, USN.
Back on station by June 26 and then soon had to set course for Guam, arriving on 3 July to disembark another 23 waterlogged aircrews plucked from the water. These 52 airmen Tigrone returned to land throughout the patrol constituted a new submarine-force record.
The Commander Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet extended his congratulations to, “the commanding officer, officers, and crew for this outstanding patrol” and commended them for “the excellent judgment, splendid navigation, and determination displayed by the TIGRONE in effecting these rescues….”
The Tigrone‘s lifeguard service patrol was so inspiring that she received her own episode of the 1950’s documentary series The Silent Service (season 1, episode 8) “Tigrone Sets a Record” which aired on 06 May 1957 and is below in its entirety.
On her third patrol, she came within sight of the Japanese home islands on lifeguard duty and saved an aviator as well as breaking out her big gun again on Aug. 13 when she bombarded Mikomoto Island (Pearl Island), scoring 11 hits on a radio station and lighthouse tower in one of the last exchanges of hate in the war as the Empire sued for peace on the 15th.
When peace came, she was part of the massive armada in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, and received two battle stars for her service.
There she is, all the way to the end…
Soon after, she found herself in red lead row in Philadelphia.
Dusted off in 1948, Tigrone was designated SSR-419 (radar picket submarine) and given the MIGRAINE I conversion that included AN/BPS-2 search radar sprouting from the after portion of the sail, and the height finder mounted on a freestanding tower just abaft it.
Tigrone, left, after refitting as SSR. Her sister ship USS Thornback has been GUPPY’d. Thornback would later serve 28 years in the Turkish Navy and is preserved there as a museum ship today.
This put the 15-foot search antenna some 40 feet above the water, with the height finder only a little below. Also came a below deck CIC for the radar, an extra generator to help push the volts needed to run it all, and guidance equipment for mid-course control of Regulus cruise missiles. In exchange, the boat sacrificed her stern tubes and surface armament.
Tigrone (SSR-419), underway in Grand Harbour, Valetta, Malta, c1952.
Between 1948-56 no less than 13 SSRs– including several Tench-class boats– were put into service, roughly split between Atlantic and Pacific with Tigrone spending her time as a picket boat with the Second Fleet in the Caribbean and North Atlantic, with regular participation in NATO exercises and periodic deployments to the Mediterranean as part of the Sixth Fleet.
By 1 November 1957, a decade as a radar boat had ended, replaced by more modern vessels, and Tigrone again found herself a member of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Philadelphia.
However, the Navy wasn’t through with her by a long shot.
The Tigrone (AGSS-419) is underway in a channel, between conversions
Recommissioned 10 March 1962 and reclassified Auxiliary Research Submarine (AGSS-419), for the next decade Tigrone operated in conjunction with the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory (part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center at Newport), conducting underwater systems tests, and evaluating new equipment. The information provided by these tests, utilizing experimental transducers, would prove invaluable in sonar development.
In late 1963, the Bottom Reflected Active Sonar System (BRASS) II Transducer and system were installed on Tigrone, and, after 1965, the much-upgraded BRASS III system was installed.
Note the unique side-facing rear sonar rack near the sail that came with the BRASS III conversion
While conducting her tests, she was often trailed by Soviet intelligence collection ships, which on at least one occasion felt the full force of the BRASS rig.
I cannot tell you how many watts the BRASS was capable of transmitting into the water, but suffice it to say it far exceeded anything else in anybody’s Navy at that time and maybe even today’s Navies for all I know. To give you an idea of the sound level it produced, all hands forward of the engine rooms were required to wear enginemen’s hearing protection when it was operating!
The overhead of that boat was festooned with enginemen’s earmuffs, hanging from every possible location to be readily available when the word was passed: “Now rig for BRASS Ops!” There were no torpedo tubes on the Tigrone at that time.
The after room had been turned into a bunkroom and held tier after tier of racks for the crew. The forward room was dedicated to the sonar system including its very own MG set to power that monster. The sonar men stood their watches on standard AN/BQR-2B passive sonar set which was in a little corner up forward where the tubes used to be. The Port half of the forward room was all the equipment the civilian USN/USL personnel used to operate the BRASS. It was a very sophisticated system, capable of varying both the amplitude and duration of the pulses it generated and if I can attach the picture, you will note a huge “shit can” mounted where the bow should be. Inside that huge and cumbersome protrusion was a transducer which looked like a huge log lying on it’s side atop a round table. The round table could be rotated, thereby presenting the horizontal length of the “log” in whatever direction was desired. In addition to the horizontal training, this transducer “log” was constructed in staves (like a barrel) and the operators could select which staves were to be used, giving them the ability to direct the transmitted beam in whatever direction they would like it to go.
We would go to test depth off the Azores and transmit a pulse in a South Westerly direction so that it could be received by the USS Baya [SS/AGSS-318, a Balao-class submarine modified in 1958 to accomidate LORAD, an experimental long-range sonar and 12 scientists] who would be operating off the Tongue of the Ocean in the Bahamas!!!!
Like I said, BRASS put a LOT of power into the water. Needless to say our activities drew the attention of the Russians and one of those ‘fishing boats’ brisling with antenna, would follow us around, undoubtedly listening to and recording every transmission we made. Well one day we were pounding away with the BRASS when one of the civilians asked me where the Russian fishing boat was. I was standing a regular passive sonar watch and I need to explain that whenever the BRASS transmitted a relay in my sonar set would cut out my audio for the duration of the pulse and then cut back in. When the audio returned, I could hear the reverberations from the transmission bouncing off the bottom, off waves, off thermoclines and maybe off the Azores themselves for several minutes, it was deafening!
I reported that the ‘fishing boat’ was dead astern making 80 RPM’s, just enough to keep up with our three knot submerged speed. “Keep us posted if anything changes.” I was told and I sat up to pay closer attention. Pretty soon I noticed a decrease in the amplitude (power) of the transmitted pulses from the BRASS. The same was true of the pulses following that and so on, until the BRASS was barely making a ‘b-e-e-p’ for each transmission. “He’s picking up speed and closing,” I announced to the civilians who were twisting the dials on the BRASS equipment and watching me to see if their efforts were producing the desired results. “Tell us when he’s directly overhead,” was the request as the pulses became weaker still. Evidently, the Russian figured that we had sped up and were leaving him behind; as the very loud transmissions we had been making were now so weak, he could hardly hear them. “He’s making 220 turns and coming right up our stern,” I reported. The USN/USL boys made some more adjustments to their equipment, “Is he overhead yet?” they asked, “Almost”, I said, wondering what in hell they were going to do. Just then, he came out of our baffles and I could hear his diesel engine roaring above the sound of his cavitating propeller blades, as he picked up speed.
“HE’S OVERHEAD NOW NOW NOW!!” I shouted and just then, the relay in my audio circuit cut my sound. It didn’t matter, I could hear the prolonged blast of a BRASS transmission coming right through our hull, it seemed that it would never end. I didn’t realize they could extend the pulse length so long! The operators had turned the transducer table until the ‘log’ was crosswise to the length of our hull, then they had selected just the top staves so that all that transmitted energy went straight up to the Russian Trawler who listening equipment was undoubtedly turned up has far as it would go in an effort to hear our previously weaken signals over their own ships noise. You guys know what test depth was in those old boats, so you know just how far away his receiver was from probably a million or more watts being aimed directly at him. We fried his sonar system . . . cooked it . .. blew every transistor . . . toasted every tube . . . Probably rendered the operator deaf for life. You’ve heard the old saying, “That noise was ten dB above the threshold of pain” well can you imagine what sound level BRASS could produce at that short a distance? It was a wonder we didn’t blow a hole in his hull and sink him.
For the next week, the only time that ‘Fishing Trawler’ caught up with us was when we surfaced after a day’s work. He could still pick us up when we were on the surface with his radar, but he couldn’t find us when we were submerged and BRASS was transmitting. After about six or seven days, a second trawler showed up and relieved him. They would follow us, but never got real close to us. Once burned, twice shy….
USS Tigrone (AGSS-419) with experimental bow sonar, off Ponta Delgada, Azores, 1967
April 1970 USS Tigrone (419) leaving Halifax after Exercise Steel Ring
Tigrone continued her quiet Cold War service until 27 June 1975 when she was decommissioned after more than 30 years with the fleet– all but about six of those in active service.
She was the last active submarine in the Navy that had served in WWII, which is something of a record in and of its own right.
USS Tigrone by William H. RaVell III
While she was expended as a torpedo test target on 25 October 1976 in deep water off the North Carolina coast at 36deg. 05.2′ N x 71deg. 15.3′ w, she is remembered at Submarine Force Museum and the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum as well as by an active veterans group.
Of her sisters, 14 were transferred to 9 foreign navies and one, ex-USS Cutlass (SS-478) remains semi-active in Taiwan’s Republic of China Navy as Hai Shih (meaning “sea lion”) at age 70.
Three are maintained as museum ships:
USS Requin as a museum ship is about as close as you can get to Tigrone. Image via Wiki.
-USS Requin (SS-481) at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. This ship was also converted to an SSR in the late 1940s and served with Tigrone in the Second and Sixth fleets during the 1950s.
-USS Torsk (SS-423), moored at Pier Three, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, (alongside the National Aquarium in Baltimore) in Maryland.
-TCG Uluçalireis (S 338) (ex-USS Thornback (SS-418)), on display at Rahmi M. Koç Museum, Golden Horn in Istanbul. She is shown above in the comparison shot next to sister Tigrone.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday Nov. 25, 2015: The enduring monitor of the Amazon
Note the sat dish and Jet Ranger
Here we see, stationed deep in the Mato Grosso region of the Amazon Rainforest around Morro da Marinha, near Fort Coimbra, is the unique inland river monitor Parnaíba (U17).
Laid down in 1936 on the Isle of Snakes at the Brazilian Naval Yard (Arsenal de Marinha do Rio de Janeiro) as part of the Brazilian Navy’s modernization program on the eve of WWII, Parnaíba is a traditional name for that fleet with no less than four predecessors carrying it back well into the 19th Century.
Parnaíba was an important vessel, with President Getulio Vargas himself attending the keel laying.
Pre-1960, note the 6″ forward mount. That’s a big gun for a 180-foot riverboat. She also has a very British tripod mast and fire-control tower.
She was built with English assistance, her power plant included 2 Thornycroft triple expansion boilers while her armament consisted of a single 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL, a pair of Royal Ordnance QF 25-pounder (3.45″/13cal) howitzers and, for defense against small boats, a pair of 47mm (3pdr) Hotchkiss singles. Some 180-feet long, Parnaíba could float in 5-feet of freshwater. To protect her topside she was given 38mm of armor on deck and around her bridge while a 3 inch belt protected the engine room, waterline and machinery spaces.
Commissioned 4 March 1938, Parnaíba proceeded inland to join the Flotilha de Mato Grosso as the fleet flag.
Peaceful riverine service ended in late 1942 when she was rushed to the coast upon Brazil’s entry into World War II.
Her armament updated with four single 20/70 Mk 4 Oerlikons and some depth charge racks, Parnaíba was used extensively for coastal patrol, then as the guard ship at Salvador-Bahia, and escorted at least five coastal convoys on the lookout for German U-boats and surface raiders which, gratefully, she never encountered. Her hull was thought too shallow to catch a torpedo, she was considered strong enough to fight it out in a surface action if push came to shove.
On 29 Nov 1943, Parnaíba greeted the fresh new battleship USS Iowa on a brief visit to Bahia just days after that leviathan dropped President Roosevelt off at Oran, Algeria. The next day she escorted Iowa back out after a night of festivities.
The rest of her wartime experience were even more quiet though she did sortie out ready for action and to search for survivors when the Brazilian cruiser Bahia was lost in July 1945. Thought sunk at first by a rogue German U-Boat but later confirmed Bahia was destroyed in a freak accident by her own depth charges.
Landing her depth charges and sailing back up river in October of that year, Parnaíba has maintained her place in the Amazon area ever since.
In 1960, she was overhauled and a U.S. 3” /50 Mk 22 and two 40 mm/60 cal Mk 3 Bofors replaced her dated 25-Pounders and 6-incher though her Oerlikons were saved as they were still useful and her Hotchkiss popguns kept for saluting.
A subsequent series of overhauls between 1996-99 saw her six decades-old engineering suite removed (and put on museum display), replaced by a more modern set of GM twin diesels. Racal Decca and Furuno 3600 radars were fitted as were more modern 40/70 Bofors in the old positions. A helicopter platform was also added for a light Jet Ranger or A350-sized whirlybird.
She also carries multiple 7.62 and 12.7mm machine gun mounts as well as 81mm mortars to drop it like its hot in a region that sees a good bit of smuggling and the occasional excitement.
Note the 20mm over the fantail, right out of the Battle of Midway. Also note that Brazilian LSOs wear the same color float coats and everything as in the USN
Her current fodder of 76mm, 40mm and 20mm rounds. Her crew still drills with her WWII-era Mk 22, and other than on some ships of the Thai and Philippine navies, is the last in functional use on a warship
Ahh, don’t these belong as hood ornaments for WWII submarines? How many thousands of man hours have been put into polishing that bright work over the past half century?
A 40mm will still make mincemeat of a low-flying plane or helicopter as well as ruin a small boat (or ashore guerrilla hangout). Note the old school Hotchkiss in the far left of the picture.
If past history is any indicator of future events, odds are Parnaíba will be in service another several decades and she is regarded as the oldest commissioned naval ship still in active fleet use and not in museum status.
Celebrating her 75th year in service in 2013
Below is a 2015 VERTREP operation where you get a pretty good view of the old girl
Most of these images in the post are courtesy the excellent Brazilian warship site, Naval Brazil and Defesa Aérea & Naval which have more information about this interesting vessel.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
Warship Wednesday Nov. 18, 2015: The Brooklyn Stinger of the Calico King
Here we see the steam gunboat USS Scorpion (PY-3) in her gleaming white scheme in an image taken in 1899. She may not look it, but when the Detroit Photographic Co. snapped this photo, the mighty Scorpion was already a killer.
Mr. MCD Borden (not Franz Ferdinand)
Ordered by Massachusetts textile magnate Matthew Chaloner Durfee Borden, commonly referred to at the time as “the Calico King” due to his huge factories in the Fall River area, Scorpion began life in 1896 as the very well-appointed steam yacht Sovereign built by the private yard of John N. Robins in South Brooklyn, New York to a design by J. Beaver Webb.
The rakish vessel, a 212-footer at the waterline (250-foot oal) with twin masts and twin screws powered by 2500shp of triple expansion engines, she could touch 15 knots with ease and, when running light in just ten feet of seawater, surpass that when needed.
The New York Timeswrote she was, “supposed to be the fastest craft of its size on the Atlantic seaboard, and all the Jersey Central Railroad commuters between Seagirt and Atlantic Highlands know all about it.”
Borden entered her into the New York Yacht Club, where he was an esteemed member and she sailed under his care with the Seawanhaka Yacht, South Side Sportsmen’s, and Jekyll Island Clubs as well.
When war with Spain came, Borden did the patriotic thing and placed his yacht at the Navy’s service, who promptly hauled her to the New York Navy Yard, painted her haze gray, added a quartet of 5″/40 guns located on her sides, fore and aft of the superstructure– the heaviest battery fitted to any yacht converted for service during that conflict, and commissioned her four days later as USS Scorpion on 11 April 1898.
While only a yacht, her powerful 5″ guns, typically reserved for cruisers, made her a brawler able to dish out some heavy blows and the Navy Department had just the man to conn her. You see Scorpion’s skipper was German-born LCDR Adolph Marix (USNA Class of 1868) and the former executive officer of the battleship USS Maine whose explosion in Havana four months earlier had sparked the war.
By May she was off the coast of Cuba and spent an eventful ten weeks capturing lighters, assisting with landings, enforcing blockades and patrolling the shallows and high seas alike with the Flying Squadron.
On July 18, she was part of a 7 ship attack force, including two gunboats of shallow draft—Wilmington and Helena; two armed tugs—Osceola and Wampatuck; and two converted yachts—Hist and Hornet that sailed into the heavily fortified Spanish base at Manzanillo and, with using her big 5-inchers to good effect, kept the Spanish coastal batteries tied down while the smaller ships destroyed five Spanish gunboats, three blockade runners and one pontoon in less than four hours with little damage to themselves.
When the war ended, Scorpion was recalled to New York, painted white and refitted with a smaller armament while Marix left on his way to become a Vice Admiral. He wasn’t the only one. Over the course of her 31 years in the Navy, she had a staggering 21 skippers to include a Medal of Honor winner and no less than five who went on to become admirals.
In October 1900. Description: Catalog #: NH 2742 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command
Another Detroit Publishing Co. shot, this one from 1903, with her laundry hanging. LOC
View of officers and men circa 1904. Note the six-pounder Description: Catalog #: NH 83748
Photograph of ship, with diary entry and roster of officers. Lieutenant Commander Richard G. Davenport was aboard as passenger. Description: Catalog #: NH 43803
As you may have guessed, Borden never got the Scorpion back and the Navy paid good money for her. She spent six years with the North Atlantic Squadron as a dispatch ship and flag waver small enough to venture into backwater ports around the Caribbean and protect U.S. interests.
Speaking of which, by 1908 she was on her way to Europe. Keeping the svelte gunboat with her 60-70 man peacetime crew in semi-permanent anchor in the Bosporus near the Dolma Bagtchi Palace, she became the station ship in Constantinople. There she remained, leaving to take the occasional Black Sea or Med cruise, for a decade.
Several times she took part in international actions, helping to assist earthquake victims in Messina, Italy; landing armed sailors to guard the U.S. Legation in Constantinople during riots in the city; and venturing into the disputed Balkan ports during the tumultuous events that led up to the Great War.
USS Scorpion (PY-3) in Constantinople, circa 1912 NHHC UA 04.01 Margaret Duggan Collection
Speaking of which, when the U.S. entered WWI on the side of the Allies, the humble Scorpion faced the might of the German-cum-Ottoman battlecruiser Goeben and, a suddenly a stranger in a strange land, was peacefully interned on 11 April 1917 without a fight, her breechblocks removed and a guard posted.
View taken at Constantinople, Turkey, in 1919 of ship’s officers. Front row (L-R): Lieutenant Samuel R. Deets, USN; Commander Richard P. McCullough, USS; Lieutenant Leonard Doughty, USN. Back row: Lieutenant George P. Shields (MC), USN; Paymaster Clarence Jackson, USN; Lieutenant William O. Baldwin, USN; Lieutenant Gale A. Poindexter, USN. Description: Courtesy of LCDR Leonard Doughty, 1929 Catalog #: NH 50276
When the war ended, she rearmed and remained as the flag of the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey, keeping her place in now-Istanbul until 1920 when the influx of White Russian exiles and tensions with Greece forced her relocation to Phaleron Bay, Greece, where she remained on station until recalled back to the states 16 June 1927.
In the early 1920s, the Black Sea was an American lake, as the Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian and Ottoman fleets had largely ceased to exist while the British and French fleets, facing near bankruptcy and mutinous crews, respectively, were keen to send only a few vessels to Constantinople and Odesa and withdraw them as soon as possible. At its height, the U.S. fleet in Constantinople included over 26 warships including the battleships Arizona and Utah, a dozen destroyers, heavy and light cruisers, floating repair shops, and transport ships.
Anchored off the Dolma Bagtche Palace, Constantinople, probably during the early 1920s. Description: Original negative, given by Mr. Franklin Moran in 1967.Catalog #: NH 65006 Copyright Owner: Naval History and Heritage Command.
1925
Decommissioned, Scorpion sat on red lead row for a couple years, a Spanish-American War vet in a fleet of 1920s modern marvels.
On 25 June 1929, she was sold for her value in scrap. Very few artifacts remain from her other than some postal covers.
Her name has gone on to become something of an albatross for the submarine force. USS Scorpion (SS-278), a Gato-class submarine, was lost in 1944 to a mine in the Yellow Sea while USS Scorpion (SSN-589), a Skipjack-class submarine, was lost in an accident in 1968. In each case there were no known survivors and her name has been absent from the Naval List for 47 years.
As for Borden, he passed away in 1912 at age 69 while his beloved Sovereign/Scorpion was in Europe. His leviathan American Printing Company outlived them all, but by 1934 was shuttered because of the Great Depression.
Specs:
Displacement: 775 long tons (787 t)
Length: 212 ft. 10 in (64.87 m)
Beam: 28 ft. 1 in (8.56 m)
Draft: 11 ft. (3.4 m)
Installed power: 2 × WA Fletcher Co, Hoboken NJ triple expansion steam engines; 2500 IHP total; powered by twin Babcock and Wilcox 225# boilers. (as built) later Four Yarrow boilers, two 1,400ihp vertical inverted triple expansion steam engines, two shafts.
Propulsion: Twin screw
Speed: 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Complement: 35 (civilian service) 90 (1898) 60 (1911)
Armament:
(1898) – Four 5″/40 guns
(1905) – Six 6-pounder (57mm) guns and four 6mm Colt machine guns
(1911) – Four 6 pounders in rapid fire mounts
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